Digital Media spring 2015... the full boat!

Artist Statement Final Victoria Vallis April 29, 2015 Subject: 350S Art Title: Digital Media by Victoria Vallis During my adult life I have been experimental in approach to a love of art, especially Digital Media! ever trying to figure out the best way to display creativity, I produce projects with an unusual flair. The artistic outcome I seek should be pleasing, interesting, and unique with a possible slant toward marketable. I want to form a full cycle of imaginative possibilities with this art. Through an application of colorful wit to my own process combined with natural sources to form unusual viewpoints (my humorous use of a cartoonish three dimensional toe, people, bands, dogs and unique backgrounds). Pieces of each come together with a change of view and meaning to form mysterious and unusual very different images. A playful effect of bright colors and the unexpected emerges. My art is a trek into the fantasy world of what if? If all was perfect like a happy cartoon with no evil, then how would things be? The settings are a backdrop of pastoral peace with vast new possibilities into three dimensional art and video. Since i had never heard of Maya before my Digital Media class, I had a new program to discover. Wow three dimensional objects from drawings in this Maya program! A whole new world of creation presented itself to me. This Digital Media class has been a good way to learn new programs, uses of digital media and even Heideger’s theories.

Seniors need love too! Have you hugged a senior today?

skip blumberg video artist

Skip Blumberg, Still Alive and Ticking …. by Victoria Vallis Digital media 350s Blog Skip Blumberg is an Emmy award winning producer, director, journalist and filmmaker for the Manhattan based In Motions Productions. Known as a pioneer in independent documentary video making, he is one of the original video artists of the 1970s. Blumberg's energetic works and distinctive style lends a personal touch to global issues. His television work, experimental videos and documentaries about world culture have appeared on Showtime, PBS, The Learning Channel, National Geographic TV, Disney Channel and The Sci Fi Channel. Educational videos for NYC Outward Bound Center, the Aspiring Principals Program, Girls Inc and The Tibet Center are also well known. Blumberg has interviewed thousands of people for TV shows; including politicians, sports and TV stars, unique individuals, street people, children and senior citizens. The New York State Council on the Arts embraced video as a new art form and funded much of the work of the first generation of portable video gear artists in the 1970s."It's not like we caused a lot of the changes that happened," Blumberg said. Part of the early video collective of 1969, Blumberg was a cofounder of the countercultural Videofreex. This launched the first pirate station Lanesville TV as an artists' low power television in New York State. He was also a central participant in the pioneering television groups TVTV, Ant Farm, Image Union and Paper Tiger TV where he developed his characteristic personal interview style and informal, video techniques. In 1984 Blumberg was selected for Esquire magazine's register of "The Best of the New Generation. Blumberg has also produced and directed several hundred shows and shorts for PBS and cable network television series. Blumberg who lives in Tribeca, is a graduate of the State University of New York. He has been artist-in-residence at WNET/Thirteen, New York, WXXI (Rochester), WCNY (Syracuse) and the 1980 Winter Olympics. He produced and directed many programs for the Alive From Off Center series of KTCA TV, Minneapolis. He is a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellow and has received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, among others. Blumberg's tapes have been broadcast on public and network television, and have been exhibited widely at institutions and festivals including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; International Center of Photography, New York; American Film Institute National Video Festival, Los Angeles; Danish Video Festival, Copenhagen; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the Museum of Television and Radio, New York; Museum of Broadcasting, Chicago; National Museum of the American Indian, New York; ILJU Art House Archive, Seoul, Korea; and retrospectives at the Rotterdam and Berlin Film festivals. Blumberg has won three Emmys as producer for Sesame Street (more than 150 shorts), Great Performances (700,000-plus online views), The National Geographic Explorer, and MyHero.com. He has also won awards for nonprofits, including the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity and the Twenty-First Century Foundation. Blumberg has been a US State Department cultural envoy in Senegal, Kosovo, Herzegovina, Slovakia, and other countries and a visiting filmmaker, artist-in-residence, and teacher at universities, schools, libraries, and media centers. Blumberg has taught at the University of Hawaii Summer Film and Video Institute, and Ohio Arts Council Summer Media Institute. He is currently is Special Professor in the MFA documentary program at Hofstra University School of Communication. He has also lead hundreds of production workshops, events, performances and in-person screenings in media centers, theaters, galleries, museums, schools, universities, and libraries around the world. Blumberg has been a significant influence to the evolution of the independent video documentary. His early work reflects exploration of graphics in video (JGLNG, 1976) to his recent documentaries about world culture global issues (Weekend in Moscow, 2002 and Return to Tibet, 2003) and performance videos (ConCreep, 2000). He has a distinctive, personal approach to the documentary form that, in his words, "warms up the cool medium of television." His work has been screened widely on television and at museums in permanent collections in the Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Centre Pompidou Paris and other museums, libraries, schools and universities around the world, as well as for clients’ educational, development and fundraising films. His video: Pick Up Your Feet: The Double Dutch Show (1981) is considered a classic documentary video and was included in the Museum of Television and Radio's exhibition TV Critics' All-time Favorite Shows. His cultural documentaries and performance videos have been broadcast on PBS, National Geographic TV, Showtime, Bravo, Nickelodeon, among others. Blumberg's works give voice to the individual and the community, as he discovers the idiosyncratic and extraordinary in America's regions and subcultures. His recent independent experimental documentary (Growing Up Bonobo: Photographer Marian Brickner, 2015), and performance videos (On Dream Street..., 2012), show games, sports, music, dance and performance as celebrations of cultural expression. Works such as Pick Up Your Feet: The Double Dutch Show (1981) and Flying Morning Glory (on fire) (1985) are considered classics. With hundreds of titles on-line, on Showtime, PBS, Disney Channel, National Geographic TV and other TV channels, Blumberg is very well known, with additional retrospectives in the Berlin Film Festival Videofest, Rotterdam Film Festival, and Dallas Video Festival. He is a member and current spokesperson for the production group, Videofreex, the subject of an upcoming retrospective at the Dorsky Museum of Art and of the feature documentary film, "Here Come the Videofreex" soon to be released in 2015. Blumberg remains an active digital producer, camcorder reporter, and video pioneer. Several hundred of Blumberg’s movies are online and in distribution for home viewing and for academic and public screenings through Electronic Arts Intermix, Video Data Bank, and In Motion Productions, Inc.

toe jam @nma”

Blog 3d toe artist statement by Victoria vallis Since I had never heard of maya before my digital media class, I had a new program to discover. Wow three dimensional (3d) objects from drawings in this program! A whole new world of creation presented itself to me. As a beginner (newbie) to the format, I had to come up with something simple for my first project that was to be printed out in 3d. The first thing that came to mind was my cousin chris’s recently amputated toe, which used to be next to his big right toe. Well I had heard of 3d prosthetics being used in the medical world. I wondered if chris would appreciate a replacement toe. The idea of “toe Jam” popped into my head, since chris is a bass player with lots of jams jammed into his musical career. Okay so now my concept required research and I accumulated files of toe related images and jokes. Additionally I studied hours of maya format. Once at the drawing board the placement of a globe onto a cylinder was not too difficult with a little help from my friends. A toenail was added, along with some shaping for definition, and wala! The maya form was sent to the printer! Okay now the waiting process, like the birth of a new baby. At last… heaven and earth moves… creation!!! Clap clap, there was chris’s toe waiting to be sanded and painted. Flesh tone paint was easy to mix and a white toenail to stand out for definition. The toe had arrived and just in time for Nevada museum of art (nma) first Thursday, again Clap clap. So I loaded up the new appendage, proceeded to nma and began filming (after asking permission). This was fun, hand a person a toe and film their reaction. to move things along, I suggested they each say, “I got in a toe jam at nma.” As you may guess the more people that arrived and began partying, the livelier the result. This little piggy did not stay home and had a great party as an ode to cousin chris’s lost toe. After another ten hours of editing the raw film, “toe jam @nma” came into being. The ah ha moment ready for cousin chris to treasure as an ode to his lost toe from me, better than a get well card!?!

A topsy turvy spring in digital media 350 by victoria vallis

Black Survival Guide Terry Marshall by Victoria Vallis

Black Survival Guide Terry Marshall by Victoria Vallis On the University of Nevada, Reno campus, the Reno Justice Coalition, which formed in the fall of 2014, helps students to explore activism and community involvement. The most recent exhibition the Reno Justice Coalition presented was to bring awareness of persons whose deaths were attributed to police brutality, vigilantism, and hate crimes. The purpose of the Reno Justice Coalition is to have a voice on campus about racism and other forms of social injustice. It was created to have a forum to talk about these issues and do something about it, because there are students here who care about these things and want change. The “Week of ACTION” gave the Reno Justice Coalition the opportunity to bring in several individuals, including members of the American Civil Liberties Union and activist Terry Marshall, who has been working with the Black Lives Matter campaign, all in an effort to encourage the Reno community to commit to social change. During the Reno Justice Coalition's National week of action, Terry Marshall spoke on how social media and the arts influence activism against police brutality and racism. As a response to the current state of race relations in the U.S., he has designed a multimedia project called "The Black Body Survival Guide." This is a guide as the owner of a black body for surviving in the U.S. He believes that this is one of the best ways to expose Racial Injustice in America. This satirical guide is meant to comment on the violence against black people being perpetuated, and raise our consciousness about the drastic nature of racial relations in the United States. Hence, sparking a movement to change the perceptions of black bodies and to increase awareness of social injustice.

No Boundaries at the NMA by Victoria Vallis

No Boundaries at the NMA by Victoria Vallis Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Abstract Painting February 28, 2015 The Nevada Museum of Art is now displaying the works of Aboriginal artists. The paintings from the remote Paruku region of Western Australian desert of No Boundaries by Paddy Bedford, Janangoo Butcher Cherel, Tommy Mitchell, Ngarra, Boxer Milner Tjampitjin, Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, Tjumpo Tjapanangvka, Billy Joongoorra Thomas, and Midpul forge a new path in abstract images. These tribal leaders demonstrate a unique view of art defined by ancient beliefs. Visual traditions of these people are transformed into contemporary artworks that serve to broaden the possibilities of Aboriginal art. These revered Australian painters preserve the stories and cultural heritage of their people. The conservation of the work of Australian Aboriginal artists is important. The roots of their work reach back more than 50,000 years, and represent the oldest continuous cultural production in the world in which ancestral spirits exert a continuing presence in everyday life. I found the colorful designs and patterns to be intriguing and very modern looking. I am motivated to try some of these styles in my own artwork. Some of the resulting patterns reminded me of optical illusions or Op Art from posters of the sixties. The colorful dots were also interesting to observe.